This should do the trick: 
@latin_am=("Ecuador","Mexico");
$regex = join ("|", @latin_am);

open( FILE, 'input.txt' ) or die "input.txt: $!";
@lines = grep { /$regex/o } <FILE>;

[download]
@lines will hold all the lines of the file 'input.txt' that match any of the phrases in @latin_am

In reply to Re: matching an array of alternates by perlmonkey
in thread matching an array of alternates by Anonymous Monk

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